In today's information processing/multimedia society there exists a continuous quest for richer human-machine interaction. This is particularly evident in the real-time video/graphics processing environment where the focus has been on more realistic computer-generated image presentations.
The objective has been to produce computer-generated images which are so realistic that the observer believes the image to be that of a real object rather than a synthetic object existing within a computer memory. Coupled with this is a desire to free the user from the confines of traditional real-time computer systems, and consequently enabling the user to dynamically manipulate the appearance of particular displayed real-time images through transforming the images into a desired output format.
Contemporary real-time display technologies generally employ a window-generating scheme which assigns a distinct display window to each displayed data stream. By controlling the display windows, the window generator controls the individual data streams. Each display window is therefore a virtual screen, or "mini-monitor," responsible for displaying a single real-time data stream.
Most all schemes employ some form of a zooming mechanism for individually altering particular ones of a received video/graphics image. The problem encountered with existing enlargement schemes is that the transformed image often appears "choppy," i.e., edges which should appear as smooth curves instead appear with squared corners. A further problem confronted is that the simultaneous, or near simultaneous, manipulation of one or more of the multiple images severely impacts the ability of the scheme to maintain the associated images in real-time.
Thus, the clear rigidness of these schemes fails to provide a flexible environment in which a user is capable of dynamically manipulating a display image screen upon which multiple real-time data streams are being displayed. Accordingly, these schemes are incapable of meeting fundamental user needs.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for generating zoom codes for multiple integrated graphics and video data streams which enables the user to create a desired output format.
There exists a further need in the art for a system and method for generating zoom codes for separately manipulating multiple real-time data streams displayed within a windowing scheme which is flexible enough to meet an expanding variety of user needs.
There exists a still further need in the art for a system and method for generating zoom codes for realistically displaying information contained within multiple received video and graphics data streams to a single display device.